Dix Park spreads across 308 acres of former Dorothea Dix Hospital grounds, about a mile southwest of downtown Raleigh. Stretching across 308 acres (1.25 km²), this open landscape once made up part of the Dorothea Dix Hospital grounds. As you breathe in the wide, grassy air, notice the 2.5-acre grass dog park where dogs run free and, in July, a 5-acre sunflower field that bursts into bloom.
This place carries civic history too: the Dix Hill / Dorothea Dix Hospital site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990, and the North Carolina legislature created a Dorothea Dix Property Study Commission in 2003 to consider the site after its planned closure in 2007. The idea of a park was first voiced at a public forum on February 9, 2004; by August 2004 Friends of Dorothea Dix Park had formed, and in 2006 a group of affluent donors formed Dix Visionaries. Even recently, readers ranked this park among the nation’s best — in 2025 USA Today readers placed it tenth best city park in the United States.
Rocky Branch and the edge of Boylan Heights lie north, Walnut Creek south, and the Centennial Campus of North Carolina State University east of you.